Potential carbon sequestration from restoration

Background

Restoration could remove 400 Gt of CO2 by 2100 (Griscom et. al., 2017), putting us on the pathway to reduce carbon emissions to keep us within the Paris Climate Agreement goal to limit “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above preindustrial levels” (UNFCCC 2015). Forest landscape restoration is a natural climate solution for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through different reforestation efforts.

Rationale for Monitoring

There is a need for tools to support restoration prioritization, and planning restoration activities on the ground. This module in Trends.Earth allows users to estimate the potential climate benefits of different forest landscape restoration approaches.

Note

Refer to the Potential Carbon Sequestration under Restoration for the tutorial to use this methodology and data.

Indicator and data needs

This module allows users to select a restoration type (terrestrial or mangrove) within a region and length of restoration activity to estimate change in biomass (CO2 equivalence) for 8 different restoration activities.

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The years of intervention and region is then selected using the pre-existing national/sub-national boundaries, a coordinate or a custom uploaded dataset.

Note

The Natural Earth Administrative Boundaries provided in Trends.Earth are in the public domain. The boundaries and names used, and the designations used, in Trends.Earth do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by Conservation International Foundation, or by its partner organizations and contributors.

If using Trends.Earth for official purposes, it is recommended that users choose an official boundary provided by the designated office of their country.

Trends.Earth gives the change in biomass under the 8 scenarios and a tabular output with the change in biomass compared to pre-restoration levels and final total biomass in tons CO2 equivalence.

../../_images/restoration_results_1.png ../../_images/restoration_results_2.png

Citations:

Avitabile, V., Herold, M., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Lewis, S. L., Phillips, O. L., Asner, G. P., Armston, J., Ashton, P. S., Banin, L. et al., 2016. An integrated pan-tropical biomass map using multiple reference datasets. Global Change Biology, 22, pp. 1406–1420.

Avitabile, V., Herold, M., Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.L., Aguilar-Amuchastegui, N., Asner, G. P., Brienen, R.J.W., DeVries, B., Cazzolla Gatti, R. et al., 2014. Comparative analysis and fusion for improved global biomass mapping. Global Vegetation Monitoring and Modeling, 3 – 7 February 2014, Avignon (France).

Bernal, B., Murray, L. T. & Pearson, T. R. H. Global carbon dioxide removal rates from forest landscape restoration activities. Carbon Balance and Management 13, 22 (2018).

Bunting P, Rosenqvist A, Lucas RM, Rebelo L-M, Hilarides L, Thomas N, Hardy A, Itoh T, Shimada M, Finlayson CM. The Global Mangrove Watch—A New 2010 Global Baseline of Mangrove Extent. Remote Sensing. 2018; 10(10):1669. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10101669

Griscom, B. W., et. al., 2017. Natural climate solutions. PNAS. 114(44) 11645-11650. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710465114

Santoro, M., Beaudoin, A., Beer, C., Cartus, O., Fransson, J.E.S., Hall, R.J., Pathe, C., Schmullius, C., Schepaschenko, D., Shvidenko, A., Thurner, M. and Wegmüller, U., 2015. Forest growing stock volume of the northern hemisphere: Spatially explicit estimates for 2010 derived from Envisat ASAR. Remote Sensing of Environment, 168, pp. 316-334.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP 21 Climate Agreement (UNFCCC, Paris). 2015. Available at unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf.